Sorry I've been absent. We've been hard at work! I promise!
So what have we been doing in the last three weeks? More planning. But now we're actually starting on development.

We managed to grab us a concept artist, and not only that, we may be getting in some new modelers. We've planned out the gameplay, and have been tweaking Insomnia.

So what have we changed with our engine? Well, for one, we optimized the absolute crap out of it. It runs a lot faster than it was before, as we implemented a new faster math library and also directly connected Bullet to our physics engine. The physics engine is pretty messy and unpleasant to use at the moment, but Daniel and I will be sorting that out tomorrow.

The graphics engine mostly had under the hood changes, and is running fairly faster due to its new optimizations.

Now, due to this major architecture change in the physics engine, I ended up gutting most of the AI - none of it is left!

However, the good thing is the engine is now fully compatible with Mac systems. Our engine as a whole will now work on a Mac with little hassle - as long as it's relatively new. The downside is older machines that are pre-built (2009 and below) aren't supported. This shouldn't be a big deal, since most of our audience probably has a relatively new rig. You shouldn't have any problems if your machine is newer and doesn't use an Intel graphics card (may God save your soul if you do)

I've finished planning about 70% of the gameplay, and the game's layout is essentially done. The assets we need for environments need a bit more specifications, but we've already started work on concepting the first area in the game - which be shown in our next update video in two or three months (at most)

I'll be completely retooling the combat system to support a new idea that I don't think has ever been seen an action game. We're calling it Reflex Grappling. It's going to be insane - and just to drop a hint, it involves flying around at high velocities, snapping necks, ripping apart robots limb by limb, and swinging around your enemies like they're made of rubber.

It's going to be awesome.
Until then, I leave you with more concept art. (This isn't final, but it's close)

So, not too much progress this week. We did more planning and conceptual work. I can't show you all of it, but I can share with some of our plans.

Anyway, me and Daniel worked on graphics and physics engine ideas. We've been overhauling them math stuff in the engine for faster calculations, which have shown to be very fruitful. We're already getting some really good performance increases.

Some of our graphics ideas include faster and more efficient Anti-Aliasing, Motion-Blur, new material effects, particle effects, a new lighting system, along with Tessellation.

For physics, we have ideas for ragdolls, hit collisions, and even vegetation physics.

We've also decided to call our engine Insomnia. Because the game is called We Shall Wake, and it seemed fitting. It'll be open source and free to use after the game is done, and we'll document everything about it thereafter.

As for concept work, we're still trying to nail down a new design for MORS. Here are a few of the concepts our artists put together. Though I haven't accepted any of them yet.